Love of the Most Exquisite Kind
by The Scorpion
Summary: A collection of eight complete, very short portraits of Erik and Christine's love. Twisted as it could only ever be. EC fluff, Scorpion style!
1. The Kiss

**The Kiss**

He stroked her cheek softly with smooth fingertips and leaned over her as her eyelids fluttered closed. Her breath slowed. She felt like sleeping. She felt like giving way to the world of dreams. His fingers found their way into her hair, ignited her scalp, chilled her. She was cold. She shivered. She wanted him nearer, but she did not dare speak a word. Her throat was dry, her mind was weak, she felt like she needed just a little sleep.

"You are bleeding," he said, and so she was. Her lips parted slightly and she gasped for air as the trickle of blood found its way into her mouth. It was coming fast and she already felt lightheaded.

"Sit," he entreated, and taking her so gently by the elbows, he set her down on the divan then knelt before her. He lifted both of her hands as if he would kiss them, but his lips were imprisoned by the mask as always.

She wanted to remove it, but she was beginning to choke on the blood that dripped down the back of her throat as she tilted her head back. She would have lifted a hand to stop it, but he held them so fast, she did not dare, she could not bear to pull away. It dripped onto her chest, it dripped into her lap, it dripped over their hands, be he did nothing.

"It will stop on its own," he promised and he squeezed her fingers in his fervent grip.

"Don't," she gasped again, a bubble of it sticking and then popping as she opened her lips and it coated her tongue. "Don't you still want a kiss?"

"Yes," he said, "A kiss." And then he kissed her somehow.

She choked once and then breathed no more.


	2. Breathless

**Breathless**

"Erik, I am getting dizzy," she said.

"It's all right. I am holding you."

"I don't know… I don't know how much longer I can stand."

"I will not let you fall. I promise you."

"Is it supposed to be this way? Is it supposed to take this long?"

"Usually it comes more quickly. Usually it is instantaneous."

"Then why now does it last so long? Why now does time fly like tears?"

"Because it is you, Christine, it is you."

"…"

"…"

"Erik, I see stars."

"Are they red or white?"

"White and bright and blue."

"Waxing? Waning?"

"Growing, growing, and growing."

"It happens this way."

"Tell me why again, Erik, tell me again why."

"Because it is you, Christine, because it is."

"But my heart is open, yours."

"I cannot repay you. I never can. This is more than any man could ever dream. This is divinity, this is bliss."

"This is bliss?"

"You do not feel it yet. For you it will take some time."

"It usually comes more quickly…"

"But you have never known it before."

"Never."

"You have never felt that power."

"No, never."

"You have never been made immortal."

"No, Erik, please, must it never come?"

"Don't you feel it coming? Don't you breathe it in the air? Doesn't the pain fill you with its anticipation?"

"I feel it. I feel. It is coming. I am dizzy. I cannot breathe. Do not ask me to speak again."

"But I have asked nothing of you… Not even this. This was what you have given me. This was yours to give. This was everything you ever had to give."

"…"

"I knew that this was how it would end."

"…I…"

"Hush, this is how love ends. This is how even you die. By the Punjab lasso."


	3. Birth

**Birth**

"Isn't he beautiful, Erik?" she asked him as she cradled the small bundle to her still damp breast. It had been swathed in black, for black was what was available.

"Yes, Christine."

"I want to name him after you, Erik."

He did not answer her and she glanced up at him, brushing back the hair that stuck to her glistening forehead. "Please?"

He sighed softly. "Yes, Christine…"

She smiled at him with what was left of her weary energy and then turned back down to continue to gaze at the face of their first born child. "He resembles us both, Erik? Don't you think? He has your eyes."

She managed another smile then as he stared back up at her, wide-eyed and unblinking. She pressed a kiss to his tiny forehead.

"Yes, Christine," Erik answered. "I suppose he does…"

"Erik," she whispered softly, but to the child. "That is your name. My darling little Erik."

The man at her side bent over her. "You ought to rest, Christine… You have been greatly strained… You need to recover yourself…" He reached to take the baby from her arms.

"No." She held the little black-wrapped thing all the more tightly to her breast. "Not just yet. Please, just let me hold him a little longer, Erik?"

He sighed again and withdrew. "Of course, Christine…"

"He didn't even cry. Did you notice, Erik? Babies usually scream like demons when they are born, but he is the perfect angel." And then she began to hum a Christmas carol.

"Yes, Christine," he said softly, moved. "Of course I noticed…"

She smiled up at him with sudden thrilled energy. "He will be a musician like you, Erik." Then she looked back down at the baby again as it gazed back at her. "Isn't that right, little Erik?" She laughed with a carefree merriment. "However will we tell the two of you apart! We must think of a pet name to call him while he is young, Erik." And she began to hum once more.

"Christine…" Erik began seriously, but then he stopped before he spoke and all he said, in the same soft tone, was "Yes, Christine."

For how in heaven or earth could he ever bear to be the one to tell her that the reason the child resembled him so was because it had been born dead.


	4. The Parcel

**The Parcel**

"My most darling Christine," the attached note read. "I have ascended to the point in my love for you where even my music cannot adequately sing of the heights and depths and dimensions of how wholly devoted I am to my worship of you, my need of you. Nothing I write, no matter how blood red the ink, does justice anymore to the hellishly divine passion of feeling that explodes within me as the climax of the creation of the heavens but only wickedly reveals itself as jagged shrieks of wretched lightning. Forgive the inadequacies of one who is but a man who loves you with the selfish purity of absolute perfection. I wished to have written you an opera, an aria, a melody, a motif, any slightest bit of that celestial art, but none would do. So please accept this small material token instead. In this world that is bound by space and time, it, and only it can best speak of the true expanses of my miserable love, my damnéd ardor. This, my idol, my dearest, is how I love you. Ever your most humble slave—Erik."

Christine could not keep away the forbidden smile that played about her lips as she pressed the paper of the note against her breast and sighed. The color of roses tinted the cheeks that were reflected in the mirror before her.

"Oh…Erik…" she whispered to herself, and her gaze turned to the lovely wrapped parcel on her dressing room table. The paper was gold, and it glistened in the flickering of the lamps as if it were itself on fire, burning, filled with how he loved her.

She pressed her lips to the note and set it aside so that she might unwrap the gift, which she did oh-so-carefully. The shimmering satin ribbons fell from around the box and her fingers found the edges of the lid. She lifted it slowly and set it aside, smiling again at the sight of the glimmering tissue that filled the gift. And as she touched it to move it aside, she only briefly thought it strange that the paper had the texture of wax, like paper from the marketplace, not like giftwrap at all.

She pulled out a bit of it and set it down on the table, and then she dug her fingers in to part the rest. She did not gasp when they struck something soft and hard at the same time, something covered in hair; in fact, she did not breathe at all. And as the folds parted to reveal to her the staring, twisted face of her former childhood friend, the necessity for waxed paper suddenly made sense to her. It was just _how much_ Erik loved her.


	5. Soliloquy

**Soliloquy**

"Erik! Erik! You have my word! You have my vow! I swore to you I would be your living bride! Your _living _bride! I swore it with all my heart, and in return you spared their lives. I gave you my soul long ago, and in return you have promised to be the most devoted of husbands, the sweetest of lambs, the provider of endless amusements. You promised me! Endless! We each received what we wanted. You have my heart, Erik! You have my love! I gave it willingly, even God knows that! Tell me you know it is so! Tell me! Erik! You have all you wanted and I am yours! I have given you my soul tonight, but I am not dead! I am alive! _Alive! _But Erik, oh! Erik! When I swore to you to be your living bride, you never warned me it would be to a dead husband! It isn't fair, Erik! It isn't fair! Answer me! Answer me! Erik! _Erik!"_


	6. Unseverable

_"I slammed the door in his face, went into the bathroom, and took a bath after putting a magnificent pair of scissors beside me, determined to kill myself with them if, after behaving like a madman, he stopped behaving like an honorable man." -- Christine, Leroux_

**Unseverable**

I had bought her everything she might ever need and it had pleased me to do so. For, you see, I had known she would come. I had known it from the moment the screams began to ring through the stalls. She had flown to me then on the current of her love for me. For she loves me, you see, she loves me as I love her.

I had brought her here to my home, I had shown her what was real and I had soothed her outrage with my music. For, you see, she is a virtuous girl. And, so, I knew there were things she would need. Clothes and shoes and gloves, hats, pins for the hats, and combs for her golden hair, rose water for her bath, delicate perfume to counteract the sweet odor of the rose, and a pair of the most beautiful, most magnificent, sharpest silver scissors I could find. This last gift was for the both of us, really. I needed them just as much as she. I had chosen scissors, you see, for they were more delicate than a dagger, unassuming and innocent, but just as deadly. They were heavy, but I knew that would only make her trust in them all the more. And I had not put them on the bed with the arrangement other gifts, no, I had slipped them into a drawer at the dressing table where she would know to look for them, for I knew she would be looking, you see, for she is a virtuous girl. I love her for her virtue, her resolve; so you see, the scissors were for me as much as they were for her.

She is bathing now. The scent of the rose water mingles effortlessly with the baskets of day-old flowers that fill the rooms, affecting me with their frailty. Her bath is hot, for she can change the temperature of the water at her will, you see, and the steam has drawn me to her door. What is to stop me from passing through? I love her and I know she loves me as I love her. She would never have been so cross with me if not for love. What is there to stop me _but_ those scissors? Those heavy, razor sharp blades that would pierce her heart the moment she heard my hand on the doorknob, and tint her rose water with that color of flowers.

I am trusting in her to be the strong one, for I cannot trust myself. But what if she is not so strong? What if she is not strong enough, virtuous girl that she is, to virtuously die? If floating in the hot, rose-scented pool of her own blood, her heart beats on, what then? Then there will be nothing standing between us, nothing to stop me at all. Nothing. My hand itches to feel the smooth roundness of the doorknob against my palm. My feet throb with the desire to step across that threshold. If only not for the scissors.

The scissors actually mean nothing, you see, and she knows this. They are only for her peace of mind, only to remind her that she is a good girl. She is bathing now. Actively. You see, I can hear her, I just cannot see her. No. So close am I, with nothing standing between us but a door and our love and a pair of sharpened scissors. The scissors that she does not know I bought just for her. It was I who put them there. I could just as easily take them away. But her blood would already be flowing by the time I could feel them, hard and smooth in my hand. And so I do not touch the doorknob; I do not make a sound, for you see, those scissors are there for the both of us. For safety.

She is humming now, and the smell of fading flowers sickens me when accompanied by her voice. _My _voice. My mind swims. The scent, she is humming, I am aching, I am itching. Perhaps, don't you think, perhaps it could be worth it… Perhaps even those little scissors do not mean so much. Perhaps even that brief moment before her fear would seize her would be worth an eternity of restraint. Perhaps it's not so tragic now that I find the doorknob feels hot against the palm of my hand, you see, because I love her and she loves me as I love her. Perhaps it is not so bad that it creaks as I turn it, and the steam begins to escape. Because, you see, after all, there really can be nothing that stands between our love.


	7. The Price

**The Price **

I made some small noise—something that seemed accidental but I knew would catch his attention. He paused and half-turned where he stood, glancing back down at me from over his shoulder with those four black holes where a face ought to have been. I looked away; I couldn't bear to meet his eyes, not when I did not know where they were, not when I could not see them. He hesitated, his hands twitched and then he would have turned again to continue out of the room…if I had not spoken.

"Touch me."

Nothing more than a whisper, gone, lost in the darkness as quickly as it had emerged, a tiny and fleeting breath that almost had never been drawn.

I heard nothing, and so I dared to look back to him again. He was frozen, taxidermied. He reminded me of one of the cloth prop men we use in crowd scenes if only the moth worms had long since devoured its features. And then, slowly, he seemed to shrink just slightly as if someone had slit a hole in him and the sand had begun to leak out little by little.

Perhaps he had not heard me, I thought. Perhaps he doubted what he heard. It was understandable. The gas fire hissed in the hearth and such whispers were easily lost in air so thick with unspoken words.

I spoke again—"Touch me."—And this time he saw my lips form the syllables. At first he shrank more, recoiling, his hands rising stiffly as if to stop my breath before it reached him. The pits of darkness above his hollow cheeks narrowed as his cadaverous brow furrowed momentarily in frustration and then in despair. I do not think he breathed.

I looked away again then, tipping up my nose and folding my hands more tightly in my lap. The clock in the hall struck one and then there was only silence. But somehow I knew…I could feel that he was closer. I breathed deeply, the way I do when I am singing and my shoulders never move…but feeling my ribs expand and strain against my garments, I remembered where I was and was gripped by frustrated despair of my own. I exhaled quickly, tore my hands from each other, and turned back to him again.

I found that he had moved so close to me that I could not even see his face unless I were to choose to tilt my head far back. I chose not to.

His hand hung limply at his side, but the tips of his fingers pulsed with the perfect rhythm of a heartbeat, just slightly toward each other and then back again, as if they did not know whether or not to grasp what wasn't there.

I opened my mouth to speak, but I said nothing. My cheeks felt growing hot and the muscles strained and tightened in my neck to keep my head from obeying every instinct to look away again. Numbness tugged at one of my feet but I did not dare move it as my whole face then burned with that prickling force that one needs to hold back tears.

And then I must have blinked, for suddenly, without moving, his hand was in the air before my eyes, turning, his fingers unfurling like dead flower petals beneath the moonlight, reaching toward me, warmed by the very mortification radiating from my flesh. They stretched toward me with the growing-speed of twisted vine creepers until they brushed my cheek…

This time I did not gasp. His fingertips were not frozen and clammy with the chill of death, not the waxy, rotting bones I remembered—no, not at all like they had been before. His touch was light and dry like the brush of a dead leaf or a sprig of blossom that had lost its bloom and gone to seed.

And so I did not shudder once, and this startled him. I know this because he recoiled again. I made another small noise, and this time it was accidental. I clenched my jaw tightly to keep my lips from forming word or scowl. But if he noticed this tension, it did not dissuade him, for after several breaths, his hand was upon my face again and then was very soon joined by its mate.

The rest…Oh, the rest...I cannot even begin to describe it. But now, my friend, you know. _That_ is how I convinced him to let me go.


	8. Starved

**Starved**

"I have a loaf of bread for you," he said, and he placed it tentatively on the table before her.

She sighed and rolled her eyes to look at it. "A loaf of bread? Why would you do that?" She unfolded an arm to poke its crust with one finger. It was soft, and a dent was made there with the pressure of her touch.

"I thought you might like it," he said softly as he hovered behind the other chair as if in need of an invitation to join her at his own table. "I thought you would be hungry."

"Well, I am not." She poked at it again, and this time her fingertip unintentionally broke its fragile surface. The whiteness inside was even softer. She withdrew with a bothered frown and flicked a crumb from beneath her nail.

"Forgive me," he whispered and moved as if to take it away, but did not seem to be quite ready to come back that near to her. So for the moment, it remained there, broken and unwanted, and very likely already growing stale.

It only took another moment before she appeared to regret her coldness and with a second sigh she added more gently, "Erik, I prefer…" But that was as much as she could manage, and she pressed her lips together and glanced away.

"You prefer…?" he prompted her carefully and dared to put his hands on the chair back in front of him.

She shook her head and tucked her hand again under her arm. "…Another kind of bread," was all she eventually answered.

"Which kind?" He pulled the chair out from the table and moved around it, but he stopped before sitting. "I will get it for you. I would bake it myself if you would eat it. Only name what you would have of me and it is yours."

"You know what it is I want."

He seemed to sink with his hopes. "Christine…"

She lifted her eyes to look across at him for the first time and showed him that the black rings beneath them were once more bathed in tears. "Please…"

He released the chair, took up the loaf, and with it left her alone again in the dining room on the lake.

"Please!" she gasped after him, pushing up from her seat, but it had been too late before it had even begun.


End file.
